Tuesday, July 15, 2014

I’ve officially benched myself. To the sidelines, Rebecca!
Out of the game.

I’m the one who will now hold your bag while you get in on
the action. I’m the one waiting outside.

It went like this.

My 9 year old, Max, has spent the last 7+ years immersed in
some aspect or another of the magical world that J.K. Rowling created. It
started simply enough. Max showed a fascination with brooms as a toddler. One
of my brothers, quite innocently, showed Max a clip of Harry Potter speeding
through the air on a broom in one of his Quidditch games. Observe the result:

Imagination + some homemade props + Photoshop = happy Max (2007)

At the county fair was the actual guy who made the brooms for the first Harry Potter movie.
Max just about died. (2009)

And the monster just kept
being fed. Little Max soon discovered that wands could be crafted from just
about anything and as the boy grew, so did the obsession. For his 9th
birthday, we finally allowed him to read the last book in the series, though he
can still only watch the first four movies.

Then a few weeks ago, a
culmination of extremely serendipitous events led Max and I to the front gates
of Universal Studios, home of Hogsmeade and Hogwarts castle. We were
accompanied by two expert theme park goers. Professionals. No joke.

Keep in mind that I’ve been
living in the Caribbean for the last three years. My pace is slow at best and I
stopped measuring time by how many things I was able to accomplish in a given
hour long ago. Caffeine is not to make me more productive, but to keep me
awake through the mid-day heat.

Having already planned to be
there upon opening at 9 am and to stay until 10 pm closing, once inside the
gates, my dear professional-theme-parkers got down to business.

“Okay,” ProThemeParker#1’s
voice was serious—like we were in over time of the final play-offs, using the
last 10 seconds of our last time out—“we have to hit the rides first because
the lines are always shorter in the morning.”

“Okay,” I hesitated wondering
what I’d gotten myself into.

Before I knew it,
ProfessionalThemeParker#2 was holding all our bags while ProThemeParker#1
dragged Max and I behind her into a line. What we were waiting for, I didn’t
know. It soon became clear that we were about to ride on a roller-coaster
designed to simulate dragon flight. I began to feel like the worst mother ever.
Not only was this my son’s first roller-coaster ride, it was his first
amusement park/county fair/anything ride. First. Ever. Oh, you’ve never swum before? I’ll just toss you in the ocean!

I began to feel extra
terrible when we sat down, then were strapped in with steel bars, excessive
padding and two different kinds of restraints. I remember screaming a
completely insincere “Woo-hoo!” as we spun upside down for the fourth time
thinking, “God, I hope my son is still breathing,” at which point I then yelled,
“Breathe, Max kid!”

“That was interesting,” Max
turned to me as we stumbled out of our restraints, having survived the ride.

I felt like I had Dengue
again and a stomach flu and vertigo. At the same time. I wandered aimlessly,
grabbing ice from the drink displays and dropping them down the back of my
shirt as confused theme park employees looked on, mouths agape at my brazenness.

The “tour” looked
suspiciously like a very long line, weaving through a fake castle. When it
became clear to still-nauseated-me that there was another ride at the end of
the “tour” I pulled a uniformed employee aside and in low, serious tones asked,
“Ummm… is this a roller coaster?” My eyes darted back and forth.

“Oh, no, no, no,” she patted
my arm reassuringly. It just moves side to side and backward and forward. She
motioned her hand, parallel to the ground, with slow, gentle movements to
indicate its directions.

Well, that’s a relief. I was
fairly certain I could handle a small step above Disney’s “It’s a Small World
Afterall” ride, which is exactly what I heard the nice park employee just
describe.

I talked myself through and
out of hyperventilating when steel bars, padding and lots of buckles were again
involved. It was done. There was no getting out of this one. Oh how I wished to
leave my body in that moment.

The employee was right—and
oh-so-very-wrong. It wasn’t a roller coaster. Technically. While I only saw
about three seconds of the screen in front of me, I’m told it was a simulation.
Apparently we flew with Harry, dodged dragons, fled from giant spiders, dodged the Whomping Willow and went
after the Snitch in a Quidditch game. Unfortunately, I didn’t pass out. I just
had my hand over my eyes the entire time.

About 4 seconds in, I spit up
a little in my mouth. I had watermelon for breakfast about three hours prior.
That’s enough time to take on quite an intense smell. I consciously kept my
mouth shut until I felt the ride lurch forward violently and I spit toward the
floor. Two seconds after that, my belly was in full rejection mode. I began to
puke. The same strategy didn’t work this time as the mere quantity of vomit
could not be contained in my mouth. And by that time, I had no idea which way
was down.

I puked and spewed and hurled
six times. Six. In a matter of minutes. At about my third release, the cute 21
year old blonde next to me screamed, “What was that?!”

“Oh God,” I vomited again,
“I’m so sorry.”

When the ride finally
stopped, I could barely pull myself out of the seat. And nobody wanted to help
me either. Not only did my stench permeate the delicate nostrils of the
hundreds of people around me, but the very sight of me was not PG. In my
immense wisdom, I had worn a pair of white shorts, now thoroughly soaked in my
own watermelon-chunked-vomit. My t-shirt, my hair, my shoes. Nothing was
spared.

The blondy I’d puked on was
one of our dear ProfessionalThemeParkers. She hadn’t signed up for that master’s
course and, thoroughly disgusted, had run from the ride in search, I assume, of
bleach and a pressure washer.

Apparently they take pictures of you mid-ride. This guy's candid shot:

Aren't they cute? My only regret is not seeing my own photo and purchasing a copy for posterity.
I'm kind of morbid like that.

“Rebecca,” I heard ProThemeParker#2
tell me, “Stay here. I have to go find ProThemeParker#1. Don’t move.” I
understand that there are thousands of people in the park and it is all too
easy to get lost. And I no longer have a US cell phone. So I stayed put,
despite myself. Where?

ProThemeParker#2 had asked me
to stay dead center in the middle of the busy gift shop where all riders exited
through. Each one passed me, holding their noses, looks of horror on their faces.
Some shielded their children’s eyes. I’m fairly certain you could see parts of
my body through my soaked shorts that even a skimpy bathing suit normally
covers. Like I said, decidedly not PG.

When ProThemeParker#1 was
finally found, she made it clear that she had to get new shorts, as did I. But
she wanted Dr. Seuss shorts.

Since I insisted on buying
her the shorts (what is the traditional sorry-I-puked-on-you gift, anyway?), we
left the perfectly good Harry Potter gift shop. I was paraded through Universal
Studios to an entirely different section of the park, “PATHETIC” neatly printed
across my face as people moved out of my way to spare their olfactory senses or lest
they ruin their children’s dream vacation with such an unsavory sight.

ProThemeParker#1 found a gift
shop she liked and I bought two pairs of shorts and one t-shirt (vomit had only
gotten on a small section of her shorts) for US$75. Gulp. I almost puked again as
I handed over my VISA card for what were essentially pajamas. But they were
clean pajamas.

In the bathroom, I did the
best paper-towel bath I could since it was only noon—another 10 or so hours
before we had planned to leave the park. The stench of my puke lingered for
hours afterwards. Or perhaps it was humiliation I smelled.

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

While most of our Claro issues have either been resolved or
are irritating parts of our lives that we simply tolerate, the company still
manages to raise its ugly head every once in a while and force us to look it in
the face. Ew.

As many of you know, one of Claro’s downright criminal and
annoying business tactics is to send its customers what are essentially spam
texts.

“For just 30 pesos a text, receive the hottest pick-up lines
of the day.”

“Want to know today’s score? Click now to sign up for just
15 pesos a text.”

“Feeling lonely? Chat with a special friend now!”

Why is it criminal? Two reasons, one of which will leave
your mouth agape. First of all, no matter how many times Josh and I have tried,
it is impossible to blacklist/block/not receive these texts. You have to
receive them. Period. Secondly—you ready for this?—each of these texts unblocks
your keypad. That’s right. You can sign up for “Daily Bootylicious Photos”
without even knowing it. The text is received and if you accidentally push “Ok”
instead of “Back” (as read the response options on my phone) while the phone is
in your pocket, then you’re signed up. And all of a sudden you’ve spent half of
your monthly cell phone budget on a service that horrifies you.

So, a couple months ago, they started sending texts along
with all of these other spam texts saying that if we didn’t enter our cedula
number (read: equivalent social security number) to “validate” our phone
number, we would lose our phone number. Poor form? Absolutely. I also didn’t
believe it. Validate my number? Give me a break. Now you’re just making stuff
up.

Turns out, it was real. My friend called me and asked if I
had “validated” my number yet. Um, no.
Well, if you don’t, she told me, they’ll take away your number. And you have to
do it by tomorrow. Of course.

I found myself in a line that wrapped around the building in
the midday heat in the middle of downtown. Because of course it could only be
done at the main office. I patiently waited as we slowly inched inside the
building, taking several steps back a few times. Several women in front of me
thought it was a good idea to call all of their relatives and tell them they
were saving them places in line. Bless.

When I finally got inside I swapped one discomfort for
another. The air conditioning was a welcome break from the heat, but my
innocent eyes were completely assaulted (C’mon, it’s my blog and I’m allowed
some creative embellishing). On the main wall of the open office space is a
large, flat-screen television. A higher-up had decided it would be a good idea
to put on the Dominican equivalent of MTv—read: a whole lot T&A,
booty-shakin’, oh-so-scantily clad women. That’ll keep most people “entertained”
for the hours they’ll be standing in line. Being a Dominican kind of line
(forget any personal space), which I no longer mind as much assuming there is AC, I was sandwiched
between two men whose mouths kept dropping open as they stared at the screen.

When I reached the first booth, ClaroEmployee wrote down my
name and let me inch onward in a line that wrapped around the large room.

Even
though we are required to be in a line, it apparently has no bearing on when
you will be helped. You must wait for your name to be called. While many
Dominicans have fabulously long names, mine always gets shortened to just “Rebeca”
since my last name is clearly too difficult to bother with. I spent the next
hour smooshed between these two men as we s l o w l y moved forward, listening
to the bump&grind music while names like Jose Luis Rodriguez Alvarez or
Mercedes Paola Bonilla de Jesus were called out over the intercom.

Standard
procedure was to call out the name twice and wait 10 seconds. Usually, someone
would emerge from the line, but if they didn’t, their name would be called a
third time followed by a five second pause. Then, assuming that person was no
longer there, would say, “So-and-So has gone!”

As I waited in that ClaroDanceClub in the middle of the day,
they called out the best name ever. Some people just have fantastically
awkward, amazing names. Forget baby name books. Some parents are just that kind
of creative/eccentric/weird/borderline crazy.

I heard over the intercom, “The Innocence of Jesus! The
Innocence of Jesus!” No exaggeration. This woman’s (I assume female) name was La Inocencia de Jesus. Then
a third time. The wait. And as three women swiveled their hips, wearing just corsets
and thongs, on the tv screen, the ClaroEmployee said over the intercom, “The
Innocence of Jesus has gone!” Indeed.

I held my laughter, but only until the next name was called and I lost it.
I kid you not. Who did they call next? Who had stuck around after Christ’s
innocence was gone?